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Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence - Paperback | Diverse Reads

Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence

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A surprising and revealing look at how today’s elite view their wealth and place in society

From TV’s “real housewives” to The Wolf of Wall Street, our popular culture portrays the wealthy as materialistic and entitled. But what do we really know about those who live on “easy street”? In this penetrating book, Rachel Sherman draws on rare in-depth interviews that she conducted with fifty affluent New Yorkers—from hedge fund financiers and artists to stay-at-home mothers—to examine their lifestyle choices and understanding of privilege. Sherman upends images of wealthy people as invested only in accruing social advantages for themselves and their children. Instead, these liberal elites, who believe in diversity and meritocracy, feel conflicted about their position in a highly unequal society. As the distance between rich and poor widens, Uneasy Street not only explores the lives of those at the top but also sheds light on how extreme inequality comes to seem ordinary and acceptable to the rest of us.

ISBN-13: 9780691191904

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Publication Date: 05-14-2019

Pages: 328

Product Dimensions: 5.10(w) x 7.90(h) x 1.00(d)

Rachel Sherman teaches sociology at the New School for Social Research and Eugene Lang College. She is the author of Class Acts: Service and Inequality in Luxury Hotels.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“We don’t know as much about affluent people as we think we do. Caricatures abound, but the socioeconomically lucky don’t often offer themselves up for study. That all changed with Rachel Sherman’s Uneasy Street. . . . With each reading, I’m a little more unsettled, in the best possible way.”—Ron Lieber, New York Times

“There have been many cogent analyses of income inequality. Sociologist Rachel Sherman’s welcome addition probes the psychology and socio-economics of affluence.”—Barb Kiser, Nature

“Sherman takes a dispassionate approach to find out how those who are ‘benefitting from rising economic inequality’ experience ‘their own social advantages.’ She elicits her subjects’ thoughts about work and productivity, charitable giving, marital discord and more. Worthwhile humanizing ensues, as do plenty of squirm-inducing moments.”—John Williams, New York Times Book Review

“Sherman offers something new and surprising: a look inside the 1 per cent’s minds. . . . She shifts our understanding of today’s dominant class.”—Simon Kuper, Financial Times

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction 1

1 Orientations To Others Aspiring to the Middle or Recognizing Privilege 28

2 Working Hard Or Hardly Working? Productivity and Moral Worth 58

3 “A Very Expensive Ordinary Life ” Conflicted Consumption 92

4 “Giving Back,” Awareness, And Identity 122

5 Labor, Spending, And Entitlement In Couples 155

6 Parenting Privilege Constraint, Exposure, and Entitlement 197

Conclusion 230

Methodological Appendix Money Talks 239

Notes 259

References 279

Index 297